


The Battle of the Somme - Dr John H. Watson’s memoirs

by Linnet



Series: Parallel [1]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 07:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linnet/pseuds/Linnet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As we know them, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are the best of friends, and that's the way it will always be. But what if they met in a different time, in a parallel universe? What would happen to the pair who are destined to become some of the greatest men in the world?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 27th June 1916

**Author's Note:**

> Extracts from the diary of one John. H. Watson.

27th June 1916

We received the first reinforcements today. Like we need any. The trenches are packed as it is. We are wallowing in mud, drowning in our own sweat and tears. Some of the guys from the farms have bought photos of their friends and families. One boy keeps showing us a picture of his fiancé. I don’t think he realises, I don’t think any of them do, that we won’t live through this. The order came through with the reinforcements. We’re going over the top next week. You should have seen their faces. They looked glad that they’d be leaving the trenches.


	2. 28th June 1916

28th June 1916

One of the newbies keeps bugging me. He’s from London apparently, from one of the nicer places. Baker Street I think he said he lived. I’ll be damned if he’s a day older than fifteen. I wouldn’t tell him, it’ll only encourage him, but it’s actually rather nice to have someone to talk to (ok, be talked at by) who really understands the whole concept of what we’re going to do. I can’t remember his name though. Looks like he’s been carved out of stone, the expression on his face. They bought new supplies with the troops yesterday, but the men have nearly eaten them all already. I don’t know what’s going to kill me first, starvation or depression. If I live till then, it’ll be going over the top that does it. I’ve been in the army for years, but I’ve never seen it like this before.


	3. 29th June 1916

29th June 1916

There’s nothing left to do but wait. The adrenalin kicked in for a while, but it’s a waiting game. There’s nothing else to do. The men have been playing cards all day, but they’re finally so covered in mud that you can’t see what set they belong to, let alone what number they are. They’ve resorted to telling jokes. I went to sit in my dugout, away from it all. To my surprise, that lad was there. You know, that Baker Street one. Sherlock! That’s his name. Well, he was drawing in the mud with a stick. He stepped on it before I could read it, and turned to me defiantly. We spoke for a while, but he wasn’t up for talking. It’s a shame really, I rather miss the company. I spotted that he hadn’t managed to scrape out some of the drawings. Turned out to be some kind of chemical symbols, like sulphuric acid and suchlike. I went looking for him later. He wasn’t with the men, or in any of the dugouts. I have to admit I was worried about him, but he turned up at dusk, right as rain. None of the others seemed to notice he’d been gone. Thank god the sergeant pays attention to what goes on around here at any rate. I won’t forget it’s my job to look after these men.


	4. 30th June 1916

30th June 1916

Tomorrow. We go over the top tomorrow. God knows what will happen to us after then. I won’t pretend that I’m terrified of what’s over there. Sherlock was good though. I never told him, but I think he could tell I was scared. He’s not much of a one for showing his emotions either, but he seems a good chap really. I asked him a bit about his family. He told me he has this brother called Mycroft. He admitted that he’s only fifteen too. Just as I guessed. I suppose his brother was too young too, but had more sense than to join up. Bless him, he’s just a kid really. He’s good to be around actually, though you wouldn’t think it. Made me laugh a fair few times. ‘Sergeant Watson’ He says to me, ‘How long have you been in service?’  
‘You’ll have to guess’ I joked, and blow me down with a feather, he got it right! First time, straight off he said ‘8 years’ as if he knew. I said that someone must have told him, but he was dead set against the idea. Worked it out, he said he had. As if I’d believe all that rubbish. He is smart though, to give credit where it’s due. Knew all about medicines he did, and we got on well talking about this and that. He guessed I’d been a doctor before I was a sergeant too. There ain’t nothing you can hide from that lad. It’ll be a proper waste of a lad if he goes over the top. They say we’ll be safe as houses, the guns and tanks will have taken care of that. It’s hard to believe in these giant war machines. They look sturdy enough, but it’d be better if they’d have tried them on some smaller battle, rather than right up at the Somme. They say the outcome of the war is resting on this battle. Douglas Haig says we’ll all be fine and dandy, don’t you fret. I find that hard to believe. But it’s zero hour tomorrow morning at 7:30. If I don’t get through the other side, I’d like Sherlock to have this diary. I’ve got no-one else to give it to.


	5. 8th July 1916

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning - Mild/Medium strength Language used, descriptions of death and a denial of God. You can forgive me for that though, can't you? Feel free to correct any mistakes on accuracy, but spelling and grammar errors may be intentional.

8th July 1916

I would have been better off dying. I ain’t never going to be the same again. That was to hell and back, that was.   
I don't want to talk about it really, but Ella, one of the nurses, keeps telling me it's important to write things down. Accordin' to her, it'll 'clear my thoughts'.   
They set the first missile to ten minutes before zero hour. I can’t remember ever being as terrified as I was in them last few minutes of silence before we went over. At 7:30 prompt we charged over the top, screaming. They said there’d be no guns. They were lying, cheating bastards. They said they'd blow a great hole in the German defence, which we were supposed to charge through and claim the day in triumph. It din’t work. It never would have done, not with those bloody fools in charge. They're worse than bloody fools, they're pompous asses, the lot of them! And now I’m stuck here in this grubby, overcrowded hospital while hundreds better men lie out there, dead or dying. And more going over every day! What's to become of this world? I've seen things that no-one should ever have to ever even imagine! My own men, lying dying around me, some drowning in their own blood, others already gone, and nothing no-one could do for them. They try, bless 'em, but you can't send nurses out on the battlefeilds and the poor sods that do manage to get in hospital aren't in for a good time, you can bet on that! Nobody in here ever sleeps, and but for the blood and screaming, you'd think it were an asylum. No, this place is a prison, where we're to wait and hope to die. That's what they do too, every day.   
The nurses are running out of sheets, so when they cart them off on stretchers there faces ain't even covered. I'm going to have nightmares about them faces.  
I’ve had enough of this war. As soon as I can walk and this blasted bullet’s been taken out of my leg, I’m going home. I’m going to find myself a mistress and a proper job. I hope for God’s sake that Sherlock’s survived it. No, I don't. I hope for my own sake, as well as his. There ain't no such thing as God, not any more, not for me. Maybe there is for those kids out there, because at least they'll get to heaven, but I won't never be able to be in heaven because I'll never be able to forget what I've seen. You reading this God? I don't believe in you. And that means you can't send me to hell no more, cause I don't believe there's no hell worse than this, and that's the truth.


	6. 10th July 1916

10th July 1916

I’ve got a huge great violin sat on my bedside table. They told me it belonged to Private Sherlock Holmes, and that he told his mate with his dying breath that he wanted me to have it. That man had a job finding me, he said. Wouldn’t tell me what his name was neither. Turns out that Sherlock brought his beloved violin all the way to the war, to the front line. Took it over the top with him too, in his kitbag. It must have been properly special to him, there’s not a scratch on it. Except one rough bullet home, passing straight through and splintering the varnished wood. The chap that brought it said that that had been the wound that killed him. Went straight through his tiny frame and out the other side. I can’t play the violin, nor any other musical instrument. But I swear I’ll learn to play the blasted thing if it’s the last thing I do. It’s the least I can do for him, bless him. No-one else to play his violin when he’s gone. Never thought a chap I met once could make such an impact on and old doctor like me. He didn’t deserve to die though, none of them did. He should have grown up to be a great man, and a detective, just like he said he wanted to be. He would have made it big to, no doubt. God only knows what was hidden inside that head of his. I’ll learn to play it for him.   
That kid's sat watching me write. It's a little unnerving, if I'm honest. 

Funny, that other chap told me his name right when he left just now. It rings a bell somewhere, dunno where from. Mycroft, I think it was. Said he came to war to look for his little brother, to bring him home. Said he died in the Somme too. It’s a damn shame, all these lives lost. I wish i could put it down in words, but no words could do justice to all those men, all those lives, all those people. And they were people, real people, playing pawns in the biggest and most dangerous game of all, playing for their lives. It ain't fair. But then, life ain't fair neither. I gotta remember that. You get what you can, but that's all, and there's no use pining for what you lost, though I admit that's what I've been doing. Well, blame Ella for that. She wanted me to write it all down, so I did, and that's all there is to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry! But these things really happened, and I needed to write about them.


	7. 13th July 1916

13th July 1916

They bring me news of more dead men every day. Some of the other men on the ward are talking about what they saw. I must have been lucky, being shot almost instantly. It meant I couldn’t get as far as the other horrors. Jack, this lad off of some farm somewhere, was saying how some got as far as the barbed wire before they fell. Hardly anyone got past that through. Tom, another private, was saying how he and his friend came to the war whole, but they buried his mate a half. I don’t want to know what happened to the rest of him, but we gets told anyway. It’s lying out in no-man’s land, being used as a cushion for some poor dead beggar. I wanted to stop listening, but you can’t. That’s like saying the war ain’t real, and it is. It’s bloody awful too. We need to remember it that way. So we don’t do it again.  
They’re still fighting. Ten thousand lost already they say, though they haven’t counted them all yet. It’ll me more likely double when they finally count them all. They told me the chap who bought me the violin’s been lost too. Private Mycroft Holmes they said he was. Sherlock’s older brother. He found his little brother, but the mother’s lost them both to the Somme and the Germans and the Guns. I’ll visit her when I get back home. 221B Baker Street. That’s where they lived, and that’s where I’ll meet her. I’d rather be able to tell her myself what fine men they both were from my own mouth, not an unfeeling telegram reading ‘Missing, presumed dead’ from some man in an office who doesn’t know. He doesn’t know who they were or what they’ve been through. Fine men should be remembered properly.   
Sometimes you don’t always catch the things life throws at you. Sometimes it’s not your fault that they slip through your fingers. That’s an old saying my mother used to say before she passed on.   
I recon I missed something special.

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticisms are welcome as always!


End file.
